Taoiseach rewrites the history of emigration

IS there no end to Fianna Fáil’s attempts to rewrite history?

I am a contemporary of Bertie’s, so I was a little surprised when he claimed on RTÉ last Sunday that he entered politics because the majority of his classmates were forced to emigrate.

I suspect there was not a single class anywhere in the Republic in the 1960s or ‘70s where the majority had to emigrate. Mass emigration only returned in the 1980s, when the full effects Jack Lynch’s disastrous 1977 government were felt. Bertie, along with Liam Lawlor, Pee Flynn and Mary Harney, were among that class of ‘77 who were first elected on the basis of Jack Lynch’s shamefully dishonest manifesto.